Fans of choose-your-own-undead-adventures and sepia-tinged drawings rejoice! Hyptosis has come out with another installment of humorous horror with Riverside. Taking place in the same continuity of his popular Sagittarian series of games, but with protagonists quite far away from Sage, Anna, and Dusty, both in terms of locale and of general competence, players will thrill as their choices help a group of overwhelmed city slickers live, die, or undie in a world plagued with zombies.
As in previous installments, gameplay takes the form of an interactive comic book. At various points you will click the choice you wish to make and advance through the story. There are four total endings where you do not become zombie chow... and many more where you do. If the Sagittarian series was a bit more of a light-hearted take on the apocalypse than what we usually see, then Riverside heads straight into parody, and self-parody at that. Expect death to be frequent with only a few storyline paths taking off into any sort of depth. Still the action is madcap and replaying is easy. While there's not much to attract who are cold on Choose Your Own Adventure style games, Hyptosis' art is as beautiful as always and fans of the genre or his other games will love this goofy side story.
This is a lot shorter than the Sagittarian games but I'm not sure if it's in the same continuity considering...
one of the endings lets you get saved by the military while the other games have you wandering for months/a year with no semblance of civilization anywhere
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Perhaps a reboot?
It seems to have a less friendlier interface than the previous titles since you could go part of the way back if you get killed whereas here, you are forced to start all over again everytime.
Just my opinion, but this game feels a lot more unpolished than the previous ones we've enjoyed. The writing and art just doesn't seem quite...there.
Um... I found 5 endings other than death. Just an interesting discrepancy.
I'd toss this link to anyone who's a fan of the zombie genre as depicted by Night of the Living Dead and World War Z.
Sure, genre's overused and this isn't exactly original, but the art and music's pretty good and I killed 10 minutes with no difficulties.
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